My JK Rowling Story Moment

My JK Rowling Story Moment

November 2019

Barcelona - the cyclists and dogs are too fast for me to snap at this hour of the day.

I am sitting in a café on the beachfront in Barcelona. The Mediterranean is gently lapping at the sand. A young woman cycles past, her silhouette reflecting off the shiny surface of the wet pavers that cover the square between myself and the beach – it has rained in the hour before sunrise and everything smells fresh, if a little chilly. The sun is just rising above the sea, perfectly lined up between two palm trees.

It has been a twenty-hour bus ride from Tangier on the northern tip of Morocco. Yes. You heard right. bus trip from Tangier to Spain.

I had seriously been considering catching a ferry all the way from Tangier to Barcelona – three days on the water sounded perfect to me. But feeling the brunt of my recent de-robing – unexpectedly out of job and having had a bunch of unanticipated costs, no income stream foreseeable before February, and a bunch of already committed arrangements in €-€-€urope, I had finally settled on the cheapest option – a bus ticket from Tangier to Barcelona.

Again, I hear you exclaim.

Yes. I bought a bus ticket from Tangier to Barcelona. It started with a share taxi ride from Tangier’s port to Port Med (one hour away, but mostly along the coast) for the 6 passengers as strapped for funds as I am. We were herded together through customs and to the ferry to Algeciras near Gibraltar, then a night bus up the Spanish coastline – more impressively crowded than some of the cheap human-cargo flights in steerage that I’ve been on.

Finally unravelling myself somewhere on the outskirts of Barcelona with directions consisting of a finger pointing in the right general direction of the city centre and beach, (and hoping that they’d understood where I wanted to go), I found my way to a hostel with a beach front café just a few doors from where I am now sitting. (Sea Hostel Barcelona)

Contemplating my next steps over a quiet coffee – as one does when one’s life falls apart completely (the beers come later) – I am thinking about getting back to and on with my writing/editing. That was, after all, my main focus for being here – for having left Oz in the first place. That and to improve my financial situation.

Ok, so a coffee lasts only so long. Then comes the beer and lunch…

I am thinking how easy and romantic everyone thought it was for JK Rowling. She had sat at a café in Edinburgh for a year and wrote. At least, that is the story, though I’ve recently heard it’s not true and now something which greatly annoys her. It was also much more than a year of hard work – closer to ten, which is pretty normal.

However, the image is still there. Writing is considered a romantic thing to do, in a  café, or a cosy den with open fire place and views through your window at the snow falling delicately onto a small and charming English country garden, a scattering of cats (or dogs, or both, depending on your preferences) warming in front of the fire, or stretching on your desk next to your laptop in a picture perfect pose (as compared to the real likely spot across your keyboard causing a massive deleting of the last week of work and endless other issues). And steaming hot chocolates or glasses of red wine.

You get the idea.

Then Johnny Depp-style in Secret Window, said cat or dog will offer advice and help you through your writer’s blocks.

At this point in my imagination, I snort.

Yeah, right.

Like writing is all fluffy cats and smooth reds! It is anything but. I think of those memes which show what people think writers do – where strangers mostly think it’s wonderful - as long as their kids don’t try a stunt like that one and why haven’t you published yet, while parents think it’s irresponsible and when are you going to get a real job.

Writing is a lot of hard work and what for most people is tedious detail. As one published author phrased it, we don’t write. We rewrite. Endless editing . There is nothing romantic about the process, I am thinking. There is just grind and hard work on interminably long projects. Even once I get to the point of getting that contract with a publisher it is still two years to the shelf.

Though get there I will.

Then it occurs to me.

Yes, it’s a huge project. Yes, I may already have been a long time on this road with significant life interruptions. Yes, it is a lot of gruelling, hard, and for most people tedious work (albeit, dare I admit here that it’s work that I love and I will happily sit at it all day, every day, day after day if I could).

But – and this is the key – everything in life is how we view it.

The old cup half full or half emtpy.

It occurs to me – why not make it that romantic image attributed to JK Rowling! Why not “live” the dream?

At least in my own head. Imagination is after all a part of my craft.

So now I “rearrange” these things in my head. Being on the road and having no fixed or permanent address, hostel bunks being seriously not conducive to focusing on writing, I decide that from now I will seek out my writing office via cafés where I can sit for hours on a cup of coffee.

Or occasionally a glass of red.

Power. Wifi. And a view, preferably of the sea.

I look across the wet plaza to the sea and the weak sun now free of its wet horizon. This was a perfect place to start.

So here I take my first photo to record my first writing “office”.

I will still be slogging away at the endless edits and rewrites and hunting for spaces of time to keep working. It is the hugest project outside having babies (and even they are now independent and “published projects”).

But in my head, these are my offices. These are my writing spaces. Join me as I find each new location.

November 2019 – Barcelona.